Integrating intelligent textiles into clothing is an exciting field as you can see by checking out our blog.

Over the holiday season I read a great book titled: ‘Intelligent textiles and clothing’ edited by Dr Heikki Mattila, Professor of Textile and Clothing Technology at Tampere University of Technology, Finland. This is one of the most comprehensive and voluminous (over 500 pages) work about my preferred topic.

‘Intelligent textiles and clothing’ is an absolute must read for anyone interested in Smart Textiles. It covers a wide diversity of topics contributed from experts in the fields of electronics, textile, chemistry, physics and design. The book is organized in four main sections:

Section one is dedicated to phase change materials (PCM). The topics are: Introduction to phase change materials, Intelligent textiles with PCMs and the use of ..read more

Building up on our post about the Music Textile and to provide information to trigger discussions in the technical sections of our new Forum, we introduce another jewel of our Wearable Electronic book collection: Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance.

This book has a very exceptional value for us. It goes beyond the ‘conventional’ electronic textiles we usually write about. Extreme Textiles describes textiles that are stronger, faster, lighter, safer, smarter – textiles of tomorrow.

Featuring examples of fully realized products from all classes of technical textiles – architectural, product design, apparel, medicine, transportation, aerospace, industry, and the environment, Extreme Textiles highlights successful collaborations between design, industry, and science.

Large, full-color illustrations and essays by some of today’s most influential designers and scientists trace the extraordinary developments made in textiles over the last ..read more

If ‘The New Nomads‘ was our first book review and our first book in our Wearable Electronic books library that has cult status, ‘Fashioning the Future – Tomorrows Wardrobe‘ is the latest and most comprehensive ‘up-to-date’ book about Wearable Electronic and Textile technology innovation.

The author of ‘Fashioning The Future’, Suzanne Lee, is a Senior Research Fellow in Fashion at Central Saint Martins. The book was published by Thames & Hudson in 2005.

Fashioning the Future gives an excellent overview of the state of the art in fashion and textile innovation. Works from the big names of today’s fashion avant-garde such as Walter Van Beirendonck, Hussein Chalayan (his recent work has been covered in our Blog), and a peek into the research labs around the world.

The book is very well designed in ..read more

New Nomads is one, if not THE, first book ever published about Wearable Electronics. This book was launched in 2001 by Philips Design and the ideas presented where something that seemed far off into the future. It is also a eye opener, clothing is not seen as something to keep protected but also to add functionality of ‘none typical’ nature for textiles – Electronics. How revolutionary!

The author Stefano Marzano and his team in Philips Design worked out a concept of adding to an ‘everyday’ item like clothing new functionality based on the emerging miniaturization of portable electronic products like audio player, mobile phones and many more.

What makes this endeavor so outstanding is that never before has someone started to adapt a very, very personal item like our clothing to the ..read more